Cryptozoica

by Mark Ellis

  “Then it’s probably best not to draw attention to yourself,” Crowe said curtly.

  Kavanaugh reached for Belleau’s satchel but the little man hugged it close to his chest, turning away. “Don’t touch me, Kavanaugh!”

  “I want to see what you have in there, Aubrey.”

  “Nothing that concerns you.”

  “Except a satphone with a direct-dial option to Jimmy Cao. That concerns me very much.”

  “I’m warning you…don’t trifle with me.”

  “I can guarantee you I won’t be doing that.” Kavanaugh put his hand on the handle. “Give it over, badass.”

  Belleau’s face molded itself into a mask of mad rage. He bared his teeth and bounded forward, head-butting Kavanaugh in the groin. Pain flared through his testicles and bile leaped up his throat.

  Staggering back, Kavanaugh forced himself to remain erect, fighting the impulse to double over. He struck Belleau on the back of his head with the frame of the Bren Ten. Metal cracked loudly against bone and the little man fell to his knees, clasping his skull with both hands. He dropped the satchel and his walking stick rolled toward the edge of the dock and dropped into the water.

  Honoré said angrily, “You don’t have to abuse him!”

  “Tell him that,” Kavanaugh wheezed.

  Repressing both groans and the urge to massage his crotch, Kavanaugh picked up the case and tossed it underhanded to Mouzi. “See what’s in there.”

  She popped open the clasp, fished around inside and pulled out a satphone. She examined it quickly, then handed it to Crowe. “It’s not powered up.”

  “Good. Cao can’t get a fix on our position.”

  After feeling around inside again, she brought out a dark green metal box two feet long by two wide. The lid was secured by a small padlock. She shook it, listening to the contents bump against the interior walls of the container.

  Kavanaugh prodded Belleau with the toe of a boot. “Get up. I didn’t hit you that hard.”

  Belleau pushed himself to his feet and stood swaying for a moment, gingerly kneading the back of his head. He looked at his fingertips. They showed no blood. He glared at Kavanaugh with pure, unadulterated hatred.

  “You are a dead man, Kavanaugh,” he said in monotone. “That’s not a threat, either. It is a simple statement of fact.”

  Kavanaugh ignored him. Addressing Mouzi, he said, “Open that box.”

  “It’s locked, Jack.”

  Kavanaugh stared down at Belleau. “What it’s in it?”

  Belleau only glowered.

  Honoré said, “It’s a journal, or a photocopy of one.”

  “Whose journal?” Crowe asked.

  “He claims it’s a secret journal of Charles Darwin, the lost log of the Beagle.”

  Crowe’s eyebrows rose. “Do tell.”

  “There’s also a vial of sludge in there.”

  Lines of puzzlement appeared on Mouzi’s forehead. “Sludge?”

  “He called it Prima Materia.”

  In a tone full of horror and betrayal, Belleau shouted, “Honoré!”

  She spun to face him. “Honoré what?,” she snapped. “You haven’t played straight with me since you contacted me in Patagonia. I don’t know what you really have planned but I won’t be a party to it.”

  “I’m just here to shoot a movie,” McQuay said faintly. “I work for Mr. Flitcroft. I don’t want to get hurt any worse than I am now.”

  “Good,” said Mouzi. “Behave yourself and you won’t.”

  Kavanaugh gestured with his pistol. “Climb aboard, Aubrey.”

  Lips compressed, face stark and white, the little man did as he was told, sitting down in a chair astern.

  “What about me?” Oakshott asked plaintively. “I tell you, there’s something down here. It brushed my legs a couple of times.”

  Crowe tossed Mouzi a coil of yellow nylon rope. “Tie Pixie and Dixie up with some of those killer Maori knots you like so much.”

  Mouzi flashed him a devilish grin. “My pleasure.”

  Under the guns of Kavanaugh and Crowe, Oakshott laboriously pulled himself aboard the boat. It listed to port, but once the huge man stood dripping on the deck, he obediently put his hands behind his back. Mouzi swiftly began binding his wrists.

  Honoré asked, “What are you gentlemen planning?”

  “We’re going downriver to lay in wait for the Keying,” Kavanaugh said, jumping from the dock into the Alley Oop. He winced when a needle of pain stabbed through his groin.

  “And then what?”

  “That’s all we’ve had time to come up with,” said Crowe apologetically, turning his attention to the instrument panel.

  “There will be more,” Kavanaugh stated reassuringly. “Lots more.”

  “Of that,” Honoré Roxton said dryly, “I have no doubt.”

  * * *

  Sunlight shone down upon the hull of the Nautique in an intricately dappled pattern, filtered through the leafy boughs intertwined over the river.

  Kavanaugh stood astern, studying the terrain on either bank as well as keeping his eye on Oakshott and Belleau. Thick foliage grew right down to the water’s edge. The prow of the cruiser cleaved through the rippling water smoothly, the big engine making a sound not unlike a protracted purr. The moisture-saturated air was tainted with the muddy, tropical fecundity of the jungle that brooded on either side of the Thunder Lizard River. Mist floated above the surface in flat planes.

  Mouzi sat with the metal box in her lap, trying to pick the lock with the tip of one of her butterfly knives. Belleau, his hands bound behind him, watched her, his lips curved in a smirk.

  “You won’t be able to do it that way, young Miss Mongrel,” he said.

  Without looking up at him, she said blandly, “If I can’t, then I’ll shoot the lock off.”

  His smirk faded and Honoré said wearily, “Aubrey, if you have a key, why don’t you just give it to her?”

  “Why should I make anything easy for her?” he snapped. “Or you?”

  Honoré swiveled her chair away from him. “You’re such a child.”

  Kavanaugh would have laughed, except he was too worried about Bai Suzhen. He felt the physical weight, not only of the heat and humidity, but also of the vast rainforest itself.

  Crowe maintained the Alley Oop’s position in the middle of the river, trying to avoid passing beneath overhanging tree branches. Venomous snakes, face-hugging spiders, leeches and even nasty-tempered, diseased monkeys had been known to drop down on unwary boaters.

  Within a couple of minutes of leaving the pier, the river flowed in such twists and turns that the banks behind them seemed to merge together to form an impenetrable thicket of greenery, shutting off any sight of the Petting Zoo site.

  With Crowe at the wheel, and Honoré and McQuay seated amidships, the Alley Oop cruised past overgrown islets and narrow-mouthed tributaries. Kavanaugh’s spirits lifted somewhat when the boat pushed through a profusion of huge butterflies wheeling over the water. Their orange and yellow wings fluttered with an almost strobing effect as they darted and skittered through the alternating bands of shadow and shafts of greenish sunlight.

  After navigating another bend, the river broadened to a span of fifty yards. Kavanaugh kept watching both banks, thinking he glimpsed swift, darting movement in the underbrush. The faint whistling chirps he heard were voiced only by songbirds, he told himself fiercely. Despite the heat, the back of his neck flushed cold.

  “What is the depth here?” Honoré asked suddenly.

  Crowe tapped a gauge showing green glowing digits. “Hard to get a true sounding because of all the debris on the bottom—fallen trees and boulders and the like. But I’d say the average depth on this stretch of the river is about twelve to eighteen feet...at least in the middle.”

  “Is that a sufficient depth for a junk the size of the Keying?” she inquired. “Without running aground, that is?”

  Crowe shrugged. “The Keying is flat-bottomed, but it’ll depe
nd on how much weight she’s carrying and how low her draft is.”

  “I can’t understand why Jimmy Cao didn’t come in his own boat.”

  “Ship. Cao’s style of yacht has a fixed keel fin that could catch on anything under the surface and tear out her keel. She also has a higher mast profile than the Keying.”

  Metal clinked loudly against metal. Mouzi uttered a wordless snarl of frustration and held up her knife. “Broke the point.”

  “I told you so,” Belleau said mildly. He glanced toward Kavanaugh. “Might I inveigh upon you for a drink of something wet?”

  Kavanaugh smiled thinly. “You’re asking favors of a dead man?”

  “Thirst knows no classification, sir.”

  Reaching down into a small cardboard box at his feet, Kavanaugh plucked out a bottle of water and unscrewed the cap. He stepped over to Belleau and tipped the plastic rim, putting it to his lips. “Say when.”

  As the man swallowed, sunlight glinted painfully from the golden stickpin piercing the collar of Belleau’s shirt. Kavanaugh squinted away, then narrowed his eyes, giving it a closer look. It resembled a caduceus, a pair of serpents coiled around a staff topped by an eye within a pyramid.

  Belleau leaned back. “Enough, thank you.”

  Kavanaugh screwed the cap back on and then snatched the stickpin from Belleau’s collar.

  “Oi!” the man cried. “What are you doing? That’s my property!”

  Revolving it between finger and thumb before his eyes, Kavanaugh replied, “I am aware, Aubrey. I’ll give it back. What’s this symbol?”

  “Just a symbol,” Belleau answered sullenly. “It has no significance. It’s an heirloom. Please return it.”

  “Please?” Kavanaugh stared Belleau with exaggerated incredulity. “It must be damned valuable.”

  Honoré turned toward them. “Jack, I think that’s the insignia of Aubrey’s lodge.”

  “Like the Shriners or Elks?” Kavanaugh inquired dubiously.

  “Nothing that mundane. He told me a bit about it. He called it the School of Night.”

  Crowe snorted and cast a glance over his shoulder, not taking his hands from the wheel. “Pretty over-the-top name for a men’s lodge.”

  Kavanaugh handed the pin to Mouzi. “See if that little doohickey is really a key.”

  Mouzi examined it. “Looks about the same size.”

  She inserted the symbol into the base of the padlock and gave it a twist. With a little click, the lock popped open.

  “Hey, presto,” Kavanaugh said softly.

  Belleau closed his eyes, as if by shutting out the sight, he would not have to acknowledge to himself that the girl had managed to get the box open. Mouzi lifted the lid and took out a leather-bound book, the dark front cover bearing no title or markings of any kind. She put it in Kavanaugh’s outstretched hand.

  Honoré moved up beside him, looking over his shoulder. He flipped open the cover. A glass tube was affixed to the inside by a metal clamp. Soldered metal and wax served as a seal. Kavanaugh took it out of the clamp and held it up to the light, tilting it to and fro. The substance inside the vial slid slowly back and forth.

  Mouzi gazed at it with narrowed eyes. “Looks like phlegm or somethin’.”

  Honoré thumbed through the plastic-sleeved pages. “This appears to be part of the journal Aubrey showed me on the plane. There’s a lot more here than he led me to believe.”

  “I’m sitting right here,” stated Belleau diffidently. “You might ask me.”

  “Fine,” Honoré said. “What’s the difference between the journal I looked at on our way here and this one?”

  Staring straight ahead, Belleau said, “What you have in your hands is the complete journal. Those are the original pages of the lost journal of Charles Darwin, protected within sheets of heat-sealed Mylar, as well as the suppressed log of the HMS Beagle as it pertains to the ship’s visit here in May of 1836. It also contains the original drawings by Conrad Martens, the Beagle’s draftsman. There are also notations written by the Beagle’s physician, Dr. Jacque Belleau.”

  Kavanaugh cast him an inquisitive glance. “A relative?”

  “My great-great-grandfather.”

  Mouzi stood up to peer around Kavanaugh’s shoulder as he turned the pages. The yellowed parchment filled with florid, cursive penmanship looked exceptionally difficult to read. Honoré removed her wire-rimmed glasses from a shirt pocket and slipped them on.

  Several of the pages held detailed drawings of Big Tamtung as seen from the sea, rendered in charcoal and ink. The quality of the work was very impressive.

  “Doesn’t look like the place has changed all that much since 1836,” Kavanaugh commented.

  “There’s no reason why it should,” replied Honoré. “No real estate developers have ever come calling, unless you count yourself and Captain Crowe.”

  Kavanaugh lifted a page by a corner, turned it over—and froze. All the moisture in his mouth dried up, leaving a foul tang on his tongue.

  Inscribed on the page in ink was the head and shoulders portrait of a creature whose face consisted mainly of two huge eyes set in a round, hairless head. The skull resembled an inverted teardrop in shape, terminating in a long pointed chin and prominent underjaw. The huge eyes looked as big in proportion to its face as those of a tarsier’s.

  The nose consisted of a pair of flaring slits, and the pronounced maxillary bones gave the impression of a blunt muzzle. The wide, lipless mouth seemed stretched in a faint smile of superiority. A complex pattern of scalework pebbled the creature’s long, tendon-wrapped neck.

  “That’s unique,” murmured Honoré. “I’d almost say that it’s an image of a Troodontid except that the cranium is too large and the snout isn’t as pronounced as the fossil reconstructions.”

  Belleau snorted out a contemptuous laugh. “It’s not a Troodon.”

  Honoré glared at him over the rims of her spectacles. “No?” she challenged. “Then what species is it?”

  Shifting in his seat, Belleau stared levelly at Honoré. “Legends from all cultures have called it a Naga, a Sheti, the Anunnaki and even the Sarpa. But we’ve been calling it an anthroposaur.”

  “A what?” Honoré demanded.

  “You heard me.”

  “Oh, I heard you—I just couldn’t believe my ears. An anthroposaur? That’s what you call it?”

  Quietly, Kavanaugh stated, “Her, not it.”

  A sudden splashing from astern and a hoarse cry from McQuay made them sit bolt upright in their chairs, then they leaped to their feet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  McQuay cringed away from the rear of the boat, falling to the deck as he fumbled with his camera. “Something is in the fucking water! Something huge!”

  Kavanaugh and Honoré stood at the gunwales, gazing at the water swirling with sudden movement, wavelets forming and cresting. A head resembling that of a crocodile broke the surface less than six feet away. The wedge-shaped head rose at the end of a short neck.

  Its jaws were gigantic, nearly eight feet long, with thick masses of scale-coated muscle swelling at the sides of its triangular head. Its armor-plated hide was of a repellant gray-brown hue. Only dimly seen amid the churning waves created by its gargantuan body, the creature looked to measure out to at least fifty feet from its snout to the tip of its lashing tail.

  The cold yellow eyes beneath knobbed ridges stared at them in silent surmise. It uttered a deep exhalation like a whale blowing, spray flying from dilated nostrils. The head and body sank beneath the surface, leaving only spreading ripples and a few bubbles to commemorate its appearance.

  Clutching his camera, McQuay gasped, “I gotta change my pants! I gotta change my pants!”

  Honoré declared matter-of-factly, “It looked like a Sarcosuchus imperator, a crocodilian…none of the fossil finds have been larger than ten meters in length.”

  Although she spoke with no discernable emotion in her voice, Kavanaugh noted her pronounced pallor and the way her hands
trembled. “Maybe you’d better sit back down.”

  Apprehensively, Belleau asked, “Have you ever seen that thing before, Kavanaugh?”

  “If I did, I probably thought it just a regular old crocodile. What about you, Gus?”

  Still at the cruiser’s wheel, Crowe shook his head. “Same here.”

  Mouzi’s forehead creased with lines of worry. “Can it capsize us?”

  Kavanaugh forced a condescending chuckle. “Of course not.” He cast a glance at Crowe. “Of course not…right?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, but then I didn’t think a goddamn pterodactyl could crash a helicopter, either.”

  “You like to fill a friend’s day with sunshine, don’t you?” Kavanaugh said sarcastically.

  The Alley Oop entered a stretch of turbulent rapids and she picked up speed as the prow clove through foaming white water. Crowe piloted the boat through the central cascade of the current, avoiding the largest rocks. Spray drenched them, but since the river water was only slightly cooler than the air temperature, the relief was minimal.

  The Thunder Lizard River widened and the current quickened as it rushed over half submerged rocks. Brown and white foam splashed over the boat’s prow. Kavanaugh returned the journal to the metal box, much to Belleau’s obvious relief. Brightly plumaged birds, disturbed in their perches among the great fronded trees overhanging the river, squawked angrily.

  Honoré peered upward as they took wing and exclaimed, “Hey, those are archaeopteryx!”

  “Yep,” Kavanaugh said shortly. “You didn’t think Huang Luan was the only one, did you?”

  When the current slowed, Crowe notched back on the throttle. “If we’re going to meet the Keying halfway, we need to find a good spot to wait for her.”

  “You really intend to stage an ambush?” Belleau asked skeptically.

  “Less of an ambush and more of a hostage exchange,” replied Kavanaugh. “Whichever way it plays out, you’ll have a front row center seat.”

  Belleau shook his head as if thoroughly disgusted. “You arrogant Yanks with your fixations on shootouts and bushwhacks.”

  Crowe turned away from the cruiser’s wheel. “If it disturbs you so much, we can dump your sorry mini-ass overboard right here. Then you can examine that prehistoric croc from the inside.”